Biography

Peyzaret grew up as an admirer of Hergé and André Franquin, but studied Applied Arts for six years in Paris before meeting the BD industry, by arriving at the workshop of Raymond Poïvet.[1] This led to an introduction to René Goscinny and starting work for Pilote in 1971, making his debut with the gags series Contes à Rebours. The unusued boards of this strip later formed the basis of his first album, Au loup!.[1]

While at Pilote, he began his most famous work, Le Génie des alpages in 1973. This series features an old and a young shepherd, their talking shepherd's dog, a flock of mad sheep and other abnormal characters behaving unpredictably in alpine surroundings. When Pilote ceased publication, the series were issued directly into albums.

He also held a long associations with several of the other francophone serial magazines of this period. Naphtalène was also published in Pilote, Porfirio et Gabriel in Le Canard Sauvage and Circus, Jehanne d'Arc in Métal Hurlant, Robin des Boîtes in Fluide Glacial, and Les Mirrois de Marguerite and Ala et Lolli were created for the Spirou supplement Le Trombone Illustré.[2]

In 1985 he began the strip Histoires Déplacées in (A SUIVRE) satirizing the ongoing Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These were collected in the 1987 album named Le char de l'état dérape sur le sentier de la guerre (The State's Tank Slips on the Path of War).[2]

Eight albums of Le Genie des Alpages were published in Norway in the 1980s by A/S Hjemmet-Serieforlaget under the name of Ullkorn, which is a pun on "gullkorn", a Norwegian word for aphorism - i.e. corn being found as gold (gull), or in this instance, wool (ull). It was translated into Norwegian by Svein Erik Søland and Inge Kristiansen.

The first four albums of "Le Genie des Alpages" were published in Denmark in the 1980s by Serieforlaget under the name of "En fårmiddag i Alperne", which is a pun on "får", the name for sheep, and the common prefix "for".